RE: Layout Tables vs. Style Sheets

I do agree with you that starting people off with obsolete methods and bad
practices makes it harder for them to learn good ones.

Many professionals who create web standards based sites use Dreamweaver,
Expression, TopStyle and many other editors. Not one I know uses Notepad
because they want color coding, syntax highlighting and code snippets. 

Granted many who use the quasi WYSIWYG editors use them as glorified text
editor with a nifty little preview window attached but it is perfectly
possible to create standards compliant web page-site without ever going into
code in both Dreamweaver and Expression Web. I teach both and haven't used a
table layout in well over five years.


Cheryl D Wise 
Adobe Community Expert - Dreamweaver
MS MVP Expression Web
Beginner Expression Web tutorial: Creating a basic website video tutorial -
http://by-expression.com/media/p/1300.aspx 


-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Loots

Matt Morgan-May  wrote:

> ... The issue is that table 
> layout is easier to teach to newbies, who were the target of this 

> ... Unfortunately, we can't just round them up and force all 
> web designers and developers to get the CSS religion. We've wrestled 
> with this for 10 years, and we may have to do it for 10 more.

speaking as a former lecturer: 
once you teach someone a wrong way it normally sticks... and to undo what
has
been retained in those first few strokes of discovery will probably take 10
years. Perhaps Adobe would like to lead the way here - teach people how to
build a web-page the right way; from stroke one. 
For example, why not:
1) Create a div, add some content, 2) create another one, add more content
3)
view results; 4) add some CSS 5) position one above the other; 6) position
one
inside the other; 7) position one adjacent the other; 8) now position div 2
above div 1, 9) and so on... and wow! one amazed student will marvel at the
power of CSS... 

PS! IMHO: developers who build standards-based websites normally prefer
Notepad ;)

Received on Wednesday, 8 October 2008 02:37:32 UTC